Neighborhood Effects Of Physical Interventions To Abandoned Housing

Many communities are facing new challenges due to the foreclosure crisis in terms of code enforcement and community stabilization. Older, industrial cities have been dealing with the effects of housing abandonment for many years. Previous studies have collected the best practices and prevailing trends for interventions to vacant and abandoned properties. Theoretical and quantitative evidence suggests that abandoned properties pose serious threats to the health and safety of surrounding neighborhoods. This study attempts to evaluate whether the physical interventions performed to abandoned homes can abate these adverse consequences. A survey of code enforcement officers in large, American cities along with Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis were performed to see this goal. The results suggest that maintenance interventions are able to abate neighborhood rates of fire and crime incidence to a much greater degree than demolition. This study is exploratory in nature and further research will be needed to quantify and better understand these results.

Author dc:creator

• Helmholdt, Nicholas

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1813/13804

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ecommons.cornell.edu:1813/13804